Reading Readers: Living and Leaving Fictional Worlds

Traditional and recent claims that literature enables readers to develop more satisfying ways of being in the world overlook the phenomenon of readers—especially adolescent readers—feeling bereft when their engagement with a fictional world ends and dissatisfied with the ordinary life to which they must return. Looking at cases of actual readers’ experiences with such immersive fictions as the Harry Potter novels and The Hunger Games trilogy, this essay draws attention to the role that readers themselves play in negotiating the disparity between the alternative worlds and alternative selves they encounter or inhabit in fiction and the often disappointing strictures of external, shared reality. Bridging the gap between the fictional world and ordinary living, the essay contends, requires a double response from readers: (1) exploring ways to enact in their own lives elements of what they love in the imagined world, and (2) anticipating and evaluating the consequences of such enactments so that they can choose between healthy and unhealthy ones.